Page 39 of Clean Hack
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The Siren's Call
Clean
I stood at the bathroom sink, staring at myself in the mirror. Nearly forty didn’t look so bad on me but it was time for a change. I glanced back down at the counter that was now covered with long clumps of shiny black hair. The clippers were still clenched tightly in my left hand. It felt strange, but as I lifted my gaze back to my reflection and ran my free hand over my now nearly smooth scalp, it almost felt freeing.
The buzz started up again, echoing off the walls of the small space. I ran it over my head again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. It was as short as I could make it without pulling the razor out. Which I had planned on but decided at the last minute to leave it for now.
As I stepped into the shower, my mind drifted off. To that one thing in my life that always seemed to get me.My psychic chick. I thought we had something going on, that I was getting somewhere, but then it seemed like she just fell off the face of the earth. I continued to get calls, just none from her. Which made me think that something was going on. I wouldn’t lie, I was worried about her. I hated that I didn’t have any way to get a hold of her. Which led me down a path that made me feel a little shaky inside.
Something could have been very wrong.
If anything happened to her, not only would I not be able to be there for her, but I’d probably never know.
She had turned into a ghost. The words she’d spoken, the things she’d shared with me, continued to linger in my head, bouncing around and somehow trying to weave themselves into some sort of image. I wanted to figure her out but unfortunately, I knew pretty much nothing about her.
I had just gotten out of the shower and was thinking about what I was going to eat, when I heard my phone ringing in the bedroom. Gripping the towel tightly so I didn’t lose it on the way, I dashed out of the bathroom with the hope of catching it before it quit ringing.
“Hello,” I answered automatically just managing to catch it before the third ring somehow.
Then the shock of a lifetime came floating into my ear, only I couldn’t enjoy it like I would have wanted to. Because, there on the other end of that phone, was the voice I’d been wishing to hear for years now. It was real and unfiltered. Which should have made me smile. But the fact that all she gave me was an address and that I could hear the shakiness in the tone, really took away any kind of joy I would have had. There was something horribly wrong.
The line went dead and I recited the address over and over in my mind until I was sure I had it memorized. With lightning speed, I got dressed and dashed out the door.
I knew the city well enough being that I had done business there quite a few times. The Dogs of Wrath might have been no more, but that didn’t mean that I hadn’t done a number of jobs for them in the past. So, it looked like I was heading back to Wilmington, North Carolina for the first time in a few years.
I made it to the rundown, seedy as hell motel in record time.
I cut the lights to my truck before I pulled into the parking lot. The placed looked empty. It looked like a damn ghost town. There was nothing around it and all but one of the rooms were dark. I pulled up in front of the room, noticing that the door was wide open right away. Not knowing what I was walking into, I prepared myself and got out of my truck as quietly as possible.
There was a high-pitched scream that had me moving really fucking fast. My feet pounded the pavement until I was dashing over the threshold. I didn’t have time to take in the state of the room because right there stalking to the opposite side of the room was a guy with his back to me. There wasn’t a single friendly, doing-something-good vibe coming off of him and I moved without hesitation.
With one swift move, I whipped out my knife, grabbed the top of his head with one hand while I sliced his neck open with the other. The gurgling noise of him choking on his own blood filled the room but I didn’t release him until I knew he was dead. Then I let his body fall to the floor with a hard thump.
My eyes quickly scanned the room to make sure it was all clear. That was when I saw the mess.
Three bodies.
And it looked like I’d just added the forth.
Shit. I just dropped a body.
Granted, I’d fucking do it again. But that didn’t mean that I was over the damn moon thrilled about it. I’d gone this far without killing and I really hoped this wasn’t the start of a new thing.
All it had taken was her panicked voice in my ear and I took off like the devil was chasing me without even a second thought. It didn’t matter that I’d never laid eyes on her before. It didn’t matter that I’d never heard her true voice until earlier tonight. I’d saved her and I, for damn sure, knew I’d do it again, no matter the outcome.
That was when my eyes locked on the wide-eyed, terrified figure in the corner. The girl had brown hair so dark it almost looked black in the shitty lighting of the room.
“Your hair,” she said in a shocked whisper as she looked up at me with the most beautiful, big brown eyes I’d ever seen in my life.
That was yet another confirmation that she had seen me at least once before. But for some reason, I almost liked knowing that she watched me a little. I should have felt a little creeped out and maybe even mad, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt an odd warmth in the center of my chest that wanted to burst and spread outward. There was something almost clever hanging on the tip of my tongue and I really wanted to say it, but there were bodies. Which meant there was work to be done. And not to even mention, the woman with the face of a dark siren still crouched in the corner of the room. Her body covered in blood. And rage started to push its way through my veins as I finally noticed that her shirt was ripped and her pants seemed to be missing. I didn’t think that she’d done that on her own.
Fuck!
I’d never felt anger like this before.
And I couldn’t explain it.
